I want to spend a little time with you today talking about Jesus.
Not Christmas Jesus – all swaddled in cloth. Not Transfigured Jesus – glowing white upon the hilltop. Not Palm Sunday, Good Friday, or Easter Jesus either, in as much, as you can talk about any Jesus without those things. No, today I want to talk to you about a different Jesus. A Jesus I like to call Jerusalem Jesus.
Jerusalem Jesus – he is the Jesus that we tend to forget about sometimes. He isn’t a kid, he isn’t yet betrayed, this Jerusalem Jesus is in his stride. He is a bonafide preacher, healer, prophet, and pain in the neck to the religious status quo. This Jesus is on a mission, singularly focused on the Kingdom of God drawn near, and this Jesus knows and is living out God’s plan for his life. This Jesus – Jerusalem Jesus – knows where the Greatest Story Ever Told is going to end, he is confident in God’s plan & he isn’t taking any junk from anybody. This is the Jesus who says seemingly crazy things like the kingdom of God is for the poor, to love you enemies, to turn the other cheek, he tells the storm to quiet down & a dead girl to wake up. He is healing on the Sabbath, forgiving sinners in the homes of Pharisees, telling is disciples to hit the road ill-prepared, comparing greatness to a little child, and he tells a grieving son to let his dead father bury himself. Jerusalem Jesus knows that the only way the Jewish businessman stuck along side the road is going to make it is if the Good Samaritan stops to help him, and the only way our sins will be forgiven is if forgive the sins of others. You see, Jerusalem Jesus has got his Mustard Seed, and as the Blues Brothers might have said – he is on a mission from God. And, while reading over my old sermons, I noticed a warning against having a favorite Jesus; I will admit that if pressured I would say that Jerusalem Jesus is my favorite.
I like this Jesus because he is radically, 100% committed to God’s will and the Truth of God’s love. He doesn’t cower at the foot of authority, he doesn’t let precedence determine what is right and wrong & he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the light of God is the best disinfectant & the truth will set you free. And so it is too bad for those Pharisees that Jesus wasn’t even the slightest bit scared, not even a little chicken of Herod’s wrath. For all it did was show them and us that Jerusalem was where Jesus needed to be, where he needed to go. This prophet needed to go to the place where they killed prophets. This was the road and Jesus was walking down it. Jesus was going to leave the relative ambivalence of the country and head right into Jerusalem where the truth is deadly. “…I must be on my way”, Jesus said.
“Yet today, tomorrow, an the next day I must be on my way.” Luke, as an author, makes sure we hear Jesus use the word “must.” “I must be in my Father’s house.” “I must proclaim the Good News.” “Zaccheaus, I must stay at your house.” “ I tell you the scriptures must be fulfilled in me.” And of course, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering & be rejected by the Elders, the Chief Priests and the Scribes, and be killed on the 3rd day and be raised.” Jesus Christ knows that the will of God, the Truth of God is not a collection of Ifs, Ands or Buts. God’s will, God’s Truth, God’s power to transform, God’s hope for the hopeless, peace for the oppressed, forgiveness for the broken, rest for the weary is a Gospel of MUSTS. Jesus must enter Jerusalem. Jesus must heal on the Sabbath. Jesus must forgive the sins of Prostitutes. Jesus must because it is first and foremost the truth and the manifestation of the Kingdom of God that we say draws near in Christ. So let me ask you, brothers and sisters, what must you do?
We might not all undergo great suffering but those who claim Christ must take up their cross and follow him. We too must proclaim freedom to the captives. We must welcome the stranger, the widow, the orphan. We must do all this and more because the Truth that propelled Christ right into Jerusalem, the same truth that we claim, did not die upon Calvary. It was not crushed under Herod’s foot or washed away by the hands of Pilate. The truth of God’s kingdom is the same today as it was yesterday & during the days of Christ. And so we must ask ourselves, where must you go? Where must we go as a church?
You see, the truth that Jesus knew was a Marching Order. It didn’t tolerate standing still, sitting idly by, or growing moss. The Gospel is a road narrative, a travel log – it inherently resists atrophy & immobility. It, at its core, wants us to get out there and recognize that our excuses are worthless, our assumptions are baseless, and when you do hit the road and your face, like Christ’s, is turned towards Jerusalem, you clearly see that the way things are not the ways things should be. To put it another way, when our Savior willingly marches right into the fire and his only lament is that he couldn’t embrace all his children and not why did I ever open my mouth, we discover that this truth will take us to places we have never gone, & see Truth in places formerly far too dark.
I think that it is time for the church to reconnect & remember Jerusalem Jesus - the Non-Negotiable, the No Win-Win situation Savior who saw God’s Will & Truth as a collection of musts. We need to liberate this Jesus from the stained glass windows, the Sunday School art projects, & take him to the streets and see which direction he starts walking. For a man named John Fife & his congregation in New Mexico Jesus began walking to the US-Mexico Border.
Finding the Spirit pulling them to the plight of those men, women and families that seek something they believe living and working in America provides them, Fife & his congregation began providing medical aide to those who made it across the harsh desert that US Border Patrol believes is a sufficient deterrent to illegal immigration. Yet to describe the desert as harsh is sadly not harsh enough. For each and every year souls perish as they set out amid the scrub brush, the rocks and the 120 degree heat and with each death they join the 5,600 who have already fallen. Fife and his congregation deep down knew where Jesus was going. They knew that if they were going to truly minister to these people they must enter the desert themselves & so they began a ministry called No More Deaths. Providing water, first aide, and emergency treatment, No More Deaths sets up outposts in the hot desert, hangs jugs of water from the trees, and walks the trails calling out in Spanish that they are from the Presbyterian church in New Mexico, they have water, first aide, and they can help.
Some of you may be cringing right now. I don’t blame you. No More Deaths make some people uncomfortable yet ask Fife or any of the volunteers who patrol the desert or administer the aide and they say that they followed the Spirit out into that desert. They are told almost everyday that they should get out of the area. They have had their fair share of death threats. Yet rather than running they turn their faces deeper into the desert. This summer Kate & I are going to head down there. See if we can help. We are going to see where Jesus leads us. It feels like something we must do.
What must you do?
Amen.
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